It’s Furious Balancing

I don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen; cooking and baking and such aren’t among my interests.  Teh Husband spends a lot of time perfecting his pies and enchiladas, but I prefer the eating to the creating.  My idea of cooking is thaw and reheat.¹

I am, however, a connoisseur of chocolate,² and one of my Christmas presents this past year was David Lebovitz‘ The Great Book of Chocolate.

This is not just another cute collection of chocolate recipes, but a primer in all things chocolate.  How to buy it, how it’s made, how to cook and bake with chocolate, u.s.w. The recipes are just the icing on the cake.

I was itching to try something from it and settled upon these.

Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter (close to room temperature)
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped

—

1.  Preheat oven to 300°F (150° C).  Adjust oven rack to top 1/3 of oven.  Line 3 cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2.  Beat the sugars and the butter together until smooth.  Mix in the egg, vanilla, and baking soda.

3.  Stir the flour and salt together, then mix them into the batter.  Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

4.  Scoop the cookie dough into 2 Tablespoon balls and place 8 balls, spaced 4 inches apart, on each baking sheet.

5.  Bake for 18 minutes or until pale golden brown.  Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.

Makes 24 cookies.³

Now, here’s the important stuff:

Use the parchment paper.  I never have used it before in any recipe that called for it, but now I know what a lovely invention it is.  It helps  prevent sticking and cleaning up afterward is ridiculously easy.  You can lift the entire sheet of paper, with cookies intact, to transfer it to the cooling rack.   Parchment paper will not catch on fire in your oven – not at 300°F anyway.  You’ll find it in the grocery store next to the aluminum foil.⁴

Don’t skimp on the quality of your ingredients.  In my cookies, both sugars, the flour,⁵ the egg, and the butter were organic.  The vanilla extract I had made myself by soaking sliced vanilla beans in light rum.  I used Guittard milk chocolate chips.  There’s an old saying about how you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Feel free to skip the nuts. These don’t need nuts.  There is a high chip-to-dough ratio in these lovelies and you will not miss them.

Give each cookie dough ball plenty of room.  A two-tablespoon-sized cookie dough ball is pretty darn big.  They will spread out during cooking.  A lot.

1. Actually, it’s Roll back foil to expose tater tots, but you won’t get the joke unless you’re an old fart like me. [↩]
2. The highlight of our trip to Paris last year was (for me anyway) the Pierre Marcolini chocolates and the Nutella crepes. [↩]
3. I did two batches and got 16 out of one and 18 out of the other. [↩]
4. In fact, the brand I got was from Reynolds’, who make aluminum foil. [↩]
5. King Arthur brand – unbleached and unbromated [↩]

I’ve always wondered about the whole bit with the groundhog seeing his shadow, or not.  I mean, if he DOES see his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter?  And if the weather is overcast and there is no shadow to be seen, it’s an early spring?  This never made sense to me; it seemed backwards.

Long story short — I was reading the Wiki article on Imbolc, since it’s Imbolc as well as Groundhog’s Day, and I found the following something:

Imbolc is also named as the day the where the Cailleach, the hag of Gaelic tradition,  gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter.  Legend has it that if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on Imbolc is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood.  Therefore, it is seen as a good omen if Imbolc is a day of foul weather, as it means the Cailleach is asleep and winter is almost over.¹

I love it when I find pieces-parts of the universe that neatly snap together.

Today is also the Feast of Brigid, a goddess associated with poetry, healing, and smithcraft.  In the blogging world, today is a day for poetry.  My contribution this year doesn’t seem to fit in as a poem — more like a prose-poem.²  I offer it anyway, since the beauty of the prose shines through.

Dreamtigers

In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger — not the jaguar, that spotted “tiger” that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the Paraná and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of war, in a castle atop an elephant.  I would stand for hours on end before one of the cages at the zoo; I would rank vast encyclopedias and natural history books by the splendor of their tigers.  (I still remember those pictures, I who cannot recall without error a woman’s brow or smile.)  My childhood outgrown, the tigers and my passion for them faded, but they are still in my dreams.  In that underground sea or chaos, they still endure.  As I sleep I am drawn into some dream or other, and suddenly I realize that it’s a dream.  At those moments, I often think:  This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will, and since I have unlimited power, I am going to bring forth a tiger.

Oh, incompetence!  My dreams never seem to engender the creature I so hunger for.  The tiger does appear, but it is all dried up, or it’s flimsy-looking, or it has impure vagaries of shape or an unacceptable size, or it’s altogether too ephemeral, or it looks more like a dog or bird than like a tiger.³

- Jose Luis Borges

Enjoy your day, whichever you celebrate.

1. Source:  Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, 1976, New York, Pantheon Books [↩]
2. Borges is my all-time favorite Magical Realist [↩]
3. From Jose Luis Borges: Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley [↩]

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles.

It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

When I find myself under stress, when I’m overwhelmed, there are several things that always help me feel better.  One of the tried and true methods involves sundry combinations of chocolate, sugar, and caffeine.  Another is immersive computer gaming, fantasy RPG being my preferred genre.  The last, oldest, and perhaps the most important for my mental health is reading.

That should be re-reading, actually.  I go back to my favorite books; they’re comforting and familiar.  It is, perhaps, my choice of books that may appear… unusual.

I’ve been going back to savor the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.  Curling up with Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath ¹ or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ² has helped maintain my equilibrium for the past week or so.

It’s the delicious, dense, antiquarian prose that draws me in.  I love the sound and shape of words for their own sake, and Lovecraft’s words are what lead to my idea for this post.

When I read, I use a large Post-It note as a bookmark.  I use this to keep track of interesting words I encounter in whatever I’m reading at the time.  Words I want to look up since I’m not quite certain of the meaning.  Words that are complex and multifaceted.  Words that make me pause and think  “Oh, this looks really, really cool.  How delightful.”  These words eventually appear in one of my lists at Wordnik.com

I’ve filled up two Post-It notes and part of the back of an envelope with Lovecraft words.  They’ve been lurking on my nightstand.  When I saw them this morning, I thought — for the first time in a long while — that I had something worth sharing.

Without further ado, in no particular order, and in nowise comprehensive:

miasmal, cenotaph, niter, necrophagous, aegipans, lambent, interdicted, acidulous, eidolon, teratologically, squamous, vigintillion, ductile, ichor, palimpsest, quintile, foetor, cartouche, labyrinthine, cumbrous, illimitable, bas reliefs, terrene, pallid, spheroid, aggultinations, dadoes, cryptical, similitude, austral, Cyclopean, anent, bizarrerie, portent, preternatural, immensurable, trans-montane, ineluctable, nefandous, congeries

1. My personal favorite. [↩]
2. This is by no means a complete review of the Lovecraft Reading List for January. [↩]

The current theme in my world is Catching Up, or rather, Trying to Catch Up.  I’m so incredibly tired of the long lists of tasks — at home and at the office — that I’ve decided to quit talking about them.  It’s the status quo.  Deal with it.

Nonetheless, here’s an FO from last month that didn’t make it to the blog.  Michelle’s Holiday Scarf.

Pattern: February Lace Scarf by Laura Nixon-Corfield

Yarn: Sock Yarn from The Woolen Rabbit in the Pussywillow Colorway

Needles: US Size 4 (3.5mm)

Size: Before blocking – 6” x 42”   After blocking – 5.5” x 60”

Mods: None

Comments: This is a simple 4-row lace repeat, which makes it easy to memorize.  It also makes it Boring Beyond Belief.  You will be ready to stab your eyes out with your knitting needles after 4 inches of knitting.  Srsly.  The upside, though, is that it looks complicated to a non-knitter.

The recipient, whom I’ve known for over a dozen years, was delighted.  I say that I don’t knit for other people.  The truth is, I do; but it’s an extremely short and exclusive list.

If only I had been able to start writing!  But, however I set about it (all too similarly, alas to the resolve to give up alcohol, to go to bed early, to keep fit), whether it was in a spurt of activity, with method, with pleasure, in depriving myself of a walk, or postponing and reserving it as a reward, taking advantage of an hour of feeling well, making use of the inaction forced on me by a day’s illness, the inevitable result of my efforts was a blank page, untouched by writing, as predestined as the forced card that you inevitably wind up drawing in certain tricks, however thoroughly you have first shuffled the pack.

Marcel Proust – The Guermantes Way

And that’s what I have to say about New Year’s Resolutions.

Actually, I need to re-read Proust.  Yes, you read that correctly — RE-read.  I had my first trip through  À la recherche du temps perdu in 1994-1995.  I’ve picked it up, on and off and on again, for years.  I’m thinking it’s time again.

One of my co-workers is an excellent cook, and she doesn’t skimp on the butter and cheese.  When I decided to do a rib roast for Christmas dinner, I knew I wanted a calorie-laden, decadent potato recipe to go along with the (pretty basic) roast meat.   She says she’s prepared this several times and that it’s a 5-star recipe.

I believe this comes from Cook’s Country magazine.  The photocopied recipe I have doesn’t say, but I’m pretty sure that’s the source.

Delmonico Potato Casserole

• 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2½ cups heavy cream
• 1½ cups low sodium chicken broth
• 2½ pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes¹
• ⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg²
• Salt and pepper
• 1 teaspoon grated zest and 2 teaspoons juice from 1 lemon
• 5 cups frozen shredded hash brown potatoes, thawed and patted dry with paper towels³
• ¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
• ¼ cup finely chopped fresh chives⁴

1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.  Melt 1 Tablespoon butter in Dutch Oven over medium-high heat.  Cook onion until softened, about 3 minutes.  Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Stir in 2 cups cream, 1 cup broth, Yukon Golds, nutmeg, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are translucent at edges and mixture is slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.  Off heat, stir in lemon zest and juice.
2. Transfer potato mixture to 13 x 9 inch baking dish and bake until bubbling around edges and surface is just golden, about 20 minutes.  Meanwhile, melt remaining butter (2 Tablespoons) in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Cook shredded potatoes until beginning to brown, about 2 minutes.  Add remaining cream (½ cup), remaining broth (½ cup) and ½ teaspoon pepper to skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated, about 3 minutes.  Off heat, stir in ½ cup cheese and 2 Tablespoons chives.
3. Remove baking dish from oven and top with shredded potato mixture.  Sprinkle with remaining cheese (¼ cup) and continue to bake until top is golden brown, about 20 minutes.  Let cool 15 minutes.  Sprinkle with remaining chives. Serve.

The recipe also states that this can be made ahead through Step 1, cooled completely, transferred to baking dish and refrigerated (covered with plastic wrap) for 1 day.  To serve, proceed as directed in Step 2, increasing baking time to 25 – 30 minutes.

* * * * *

1. Recipe quote:  We prefer the buttery flavor of Yukon Gold potatoes, but all-purpose and red potatoes also work.  Do not use russets; their high starch content will make the casserole gluey. [↩]
2. I’m going to wimp out and use it from a jar.  I’m not a big enough nutmeg fan to buy it fresh and grate it myself. [↩]
3. Recipe quote: We had good results with Ore-Ida Country Style shredded hash brown potatoes, available in the freezer section of most supermarkets. [↩]
4. I don’t like chives, so I will need to substitute another seasoning to replace them.  Suggestions welcome. [↩]

One of my favorite poems, holiday season or not.

————————————————————

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

While my absence from blogging primarily is due to a heavy work load at the office, knitting under a deadline, and not a few problems with my home computer, I am, for the most part, Doing Quite Well — at least as far as my depression is concerned.  I enjoy the dark, cold winter nights.   I crawl into my den with my books, cats, yarn, and computer games, and I am Very Content Indeed — happily and cozily cocooned.

There’s a passage in Moby Dick, when Ishmael and Queequeg are under the covers at the boarding house, prior to their sailing on The Pequod, which describes this comforting warmth and well-being perfectly:

We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was chilly out of doors; indeed out of bedclothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room.  The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast….[I]f like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of you nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm….[T]he height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.  Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

No Seasonal Affective Disorder here, thankyouverymuch, at least not the “normal” kind.

We have a Christmas tree up for the first time in two years.  Two Christmases ago, I lost Gregor and I had new kittens to care for.  Last Christmas, a combination of Teh Husband’s work and mine (and a few bouts with head colds) kept us from doing much.  This year I finally have the energy for a little celebration and relaxation.

I am officially off work until Monday, December 29th.  I know it might not seem like much to some of you, but to me, I have four consecutive days of freedom and pleasure.  No traveling.  No relatives.  No must-attend parties.  No Christmas shopping.  No craziness.  I have four days to call my own and I have no intention of doing anything I don’t feel like doing.  I think the most stressful activity will be doing the grocery shopping tomorrow to get the missing odds and ends for our Christmas Day Feast.

Le Menu (so far)

Foolproof Rib Roast. Teh Husband and I are going out in the morning to pick up a 6-pound standing rib roast at Knight’s Market.

Steamed Asparagus with Real Hollandaise Sauce. This involves whisking egg yolks and lemon juice over a double boiler as you incrementally add melted butter, whisking, whisking, whisking all the way.  There is no comparison between Real Hollandaise and That Blender Crap.

Delmonico Potato Casserole. If you’re nice to me, I’ll type out the recipe.  The recipes I found online for Delmonico Potatoes left a lot to be desired.  One even called for — I kid you not — cubed processed cheese food. I’m certain there is a time and a place for cubed processed cheese food,¹ but my Christmas Day Feast is not it.

An As-Yet-to-Be-Determined Dessert. Maybe.  Teh Husband picked up the Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark for me today, and I’m satisfied to call that our dessert.  This is assuming I don’t eat it all in the next 36 hours.

More later, cats and kittens.

1. Heck, I love me some aerosol cheese on a Triscuit. [↩]

More in a little while…

These are screenshots of Laiane, Elven Ranger, in Dragon Age: Origins.    I’ll do a longer post when I’ve played a bit more and have a better feel for the game.

I’ve been chewing on two ideas for blog posts.

One post would be a righteously indignant screed concerning the utter stupidity of the public and the media in their interpretations of the latest recommendations on mammograms for women between the ages of 40 and 49.  Honestly, people; get a grip.

I threw that idea out because I really don’t have the energy for righteous indignation right now.

The other idea for a post was how I find myself thinking more and more about my own mortality.

I have to point out — here and now — that this has nothing to do with my chronic depression or chronic pain, nor is it anything suicidal.  I’m not getting all emo-gothy-weird — I don’t have the wardrobe for it.  I’ve just been thinking thinking, and I feel myself Running Out of Time.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker ¹

There is so much I want to see and do² and experience; it’s really not so much of a memento mori thing as it is a sic transit gloria mundi thing.

In any event, that’s where my head is — for what its’ worth — and I’ve just reminded myself that I really need to get around to reading the annotated The Waste Land that’s been sitting on my to-be-read bookshelf for the past twelve months.

Damn.

I better get up on that.

1. T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock [↩]
2. And read and knit [↩]

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.”

I’ve been working on a stealth knitting project for the past week, and I finally get to write the FO post since it was given to the Birthday Girl  this morning. She loves it.

Pattern: Scrunchable Scarf by Susan McCone (KnitList)

Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Aura, Color 750 (Ivory), 2 balls

Needles: U.S. Size 8/5.0mm

Size: After blocking, approximately 4″ by 48″

A very easy pattern, and it’s the yarn that really sets the scarf apart as special.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t photograph that well.  The silk gives it a lovely sheen and the mohair has wonderful loft.

The thought I had as I was knitting this was that it would be a perfect scarf to wear for a “special occasion” evening.

It was graciously received.  It was given to a co-worker who has watched me knit for a few years; she knows how happy it makes me to work with high-quality yarn.

I hope I got all the cat hair out of it before I gave it to her…